A range of UK retailers experienced problems with card acceptance today, including supermarkets and fast food outlets.
Down Detector, an online platform which reports on technological outages across various fields, reported a surge in Visa outage reports on 11 July.
Asda and Sainsbury’s, two of the UK’s largest supermarket chains, alongside retailer Marks and Spencer and fast food firm McDonalds, are some of the firms affected.
According to Down Detector, reports of Visa outages peaked at 9:39am with over 635 reports. The surge in outages began just before 8am and continued into the afternoon of 11 July.
Customer service accounts on X (formerly Twitter) responded to claims of outages by a number of customers. Sainsbury’s in particular noted that there had been a nationwide issue with card payments.
Commenting to Payment Expert, Hicham Mabchour, VP UK at Dynatrace, a global technology company, said: “This morning’s outage has created major disruption for shoppers, in scenes that have become all too familiar across the country. Customers at some of the UK’s biggest retailers were left scrambling for cash when retailers were unable to accept their payment cards. Organisations need to ensure its customers are always able to pay for the critical goods they need to live their lives, from the food they put on their table, to the petrol that gets them to work.
“As the UK continues its transition towards an increasingly cashless society, these outages need to be relegated to the past. Payment card providers urgently need to change the way they monitor their systems, so they can spot issues as they emerge and prevent any disruption to their customers.
“Given the way modern payment systems are built, they can no longer rely on a fragmented array of manual monitoring tools. In fact, 88% of financial services IT leaders say their technology stack has become so complex that it is beyond human ability to manage. AI-driven, unified approaches to observability are therefore no longer a nice-to-have, they are mandatory.”
Visa and Mastercard both acknowledged to Sky News that issues had been reported and that both firms were aware of nationwide issues affecting card payments in the UK.
A Visa spokesperson told the outlet: “While Visa’s systems are operating normally, we are working with our partners to investigate.”
Mastercard’s spokesperson informed Sky that whilst it was aware of issues, “there is no current indication that these issues are related to our network”.
